The AJC–Ms. Magazine Debacle

Last October, the American Jewish Congress submitted an advertisement to Ms. Magazine that pictured three Israeli women—Tzipi Livni, foreign minister and vice prime minister; Dorit Beinish, president of the Supreme Court; and Dalia Itzik, speaker of the Knesset—over the headline "This is Israel."

Ms. refused to run the ad.

According to Harriet Kurlander, executive director of AJC's Southeast region, a Ms. staff member said the ad was "too controversial" and would create "a firestorm." The magazine invited AJC to submit an alternative ad on reproductive freedom or women's empowerment "but not on this."

What exactly was controversial? AJC wanted to know. Why would an ad featuring three achieving women cause a firestorm at a feminist publication? To find out, AJC President Richard S. Gordon left three phone messages at the office of Ms. publisher Eleanor Smeal and sent her a certified letter. All were ignored. According to Kurlander, AJC "waited it out" through November and December.

On January 10th, the group issued a news release in which Gordon said, "Ms. has the right to turn down our ad. But in exercising that right, it has spoken loudly about itself and its readership, and their lingering hostility to Israel." The gautlet was thrown: not only was the magazine anti-Israel but, by extension, so were its readers.

Four days later, Ms. Executive Editor Katherine Spillar released a statement in which she termed AJC's charge "untrue and unfair." In the magazine's defense, she cited not only its past coverage of "the Israeli feminist movement and women leaders in Israel," but also the fact that its current issue featured a profile of Livni, one of the women pictured in the ad. However, she said, because the ad could be seen to be politically partisan (Livni and Itzik both belong to Israel's ruling party) and because its slogan—"This is Israel"—implied that all Israeli women hold equal positions of power with men, Ms. deemed it "inconsistent" with the magazine's policy of accepting "only mission-driven advertisements from primarily non-profit, non-partisan organizations that promote women's equality, social justice, sustainable environment, and nonviolence."

As both a founding editor of Ms. and a co-founder of the AJC's Commission on Women's Equality, I find myself in the cross-hairs of the dispute—and thus uniquely entitled to blame both sides. If past experience still applies, I can imagine the magazine's disorganized offices, the inefficiency and carelessness endemic to shoestring operations. But none of that can excuse the way the magazine handled this episode.

Ms. blew it big-time by offering muddled or implausible reasons for the ad's rejection and by failing to understand how provocative and politically suspect those reasons would sound to Jewish ears. Ms. should have defended its advertising policy clearly and succinctly ("We don't take country ads"), on a timely basis, and in one voice. It should have challenged AJC to come up with a new slogan that focused on the three Israeli women and jibed with the magazine's mission to "combat sex discrimination and oppression"—maybe something like, "Who says women can't lead?" And, obviously, Ms. should have answered AJC's letter and phone calls rather than let the organization's suspicions metastasize.

For its part, AJC blew it by ratcheting up the dispute. It organized an email campaign urging people to demand that Ms. apologize "on behalf of Israel and the Jewish people." As word spread, some women cancelled their subscriptions. One artist wrote to Ms. that she preferred it never again review her work. The Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance recruited its members "to speak out on behalf of Israel." Alan Dershowitz demanded that Ms. fire the person responsible for the decision to reject the ad; he also vowed "to start a campaign of leading feminists to critique and disassociate themselves from so bigoted a magazine." AJC claimed it heard from many Jews who felt "personally betrayed" by the magazine's action.

On January 15th, AJC called a news conference at which three authors well-known in feminist and Jewish circles—Phyllis Chesler, Blu Greenberg and Francine Klagsbrun—registered their outrage. Using words like "Nazified," Chesler badmouthed Ms., the National Organization for Women, the Feminist Majority Foundation, Gloria Steinem and "Western feminism in general." Ms.'s actions, she said, "revealed how Palestinized and Stalinized they've become."

Greenberg called the ad's rejection "contemptible." Characterizing the dispute as "a battle not only for the legitimacy and truth about Israel" but "a struggle for the very soul of feminism," Greenberg charged that "the forces at Ms. have aligned themselves with the political far left" and with "hostile attitudes that become incitement for those who harbor genocidal plans for Israel, as does Ahmadinejad."

Klagsbrun said it broke her heart that Ms. could be so "narrow, fearful, biased."

Author Cynthia Ozick and Professor Susannah Heschel contributed written statements: "Ms. is now conspicuously exposed as having joined the anti-democratic, anti-Israel totalitarian radical Left," wrote Ozick, while Heschel asserted, "Silencing the voices of women from the State of Israel who are struggling for political and economic parity is a betrayal of our feminist solidarity." (Maybe she missed the three-page article on this very struggle by Israeli scholar-feminist Alice Shalvi in the Spring 2006 Ms., or the profile of Livni.)

I don't recognize the feminism depicted in these hysterical rants. I dispute the contention that anti-Israel bias is, as Kurlander put it, "the dirty little secret in the secular feminist movement." My experience tells me that feminists hold as wide a range of views on Israel as they do on other political matters.

As for anti-Israel bias in the pages of Ms. itself, that's been pretty well debunked by people who actually read the magazine. Columnist Katha Pollitt wrote in The Nation that, after rereading the past three years of the magazine, she found "its coverage of Israel seemed if anything more positive than its coverage of Muslim and/or Arab lands."

Claire Kinberg, managing editor of Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal, went to the trouble of reviewing the advertising in 12 back issues of Ms., and concluded that the Israel ad "would have been completely out of character with every other ad in the magazine." She discovered that almost all the ads were for feminist conferences, books, foundations, or for musicians, animal rights groups or small commercial ventures, such as T-shirts with feminist slogans. She found one ad for the ACLU but no corporate ads and no ads from countries.

As for the articles, Kinberg wrote, not one "pumped or praised any countries… All were critical of the conditions of women in each country…There were absolutely no ‘pro-Palestinian' or anti-Israel or anti-Zionism articles or even innuendo."

I don't fear reasoned debate about Israel, Zionism or any subject. What I fear is a possible backlash by progressive and feminist Jews against feminism overall as a result of a Jewish organization's accusing the magazine and the women's movement of supposedly rampant anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. What I decry is AJC's wholesale condemnation of secular feminism, an attack that is counterproductive to the progress of women (including Jewish women) and ultimately "bad for the Jews."

While others have speculated on the magazine's "real reason" for rejecting the ad, what interests me is AJC's "real reason" for publicizing the dispute, and doing so with such relish and rancor. I can't help wondering if, by defaming Ms., the AJC found an easy way to win media attention and polish its pro-Israel credentials in the eyes of conservative Jewish male leaders and funders.

AJC seems clearly to have been motivated by nationalist fervor, not feminist advocacy. The headline on its first press release said, "Ms. Magazine Blocks Ad on Israeli Women." But subsequent releases contend the ad wasn't really about women; it was about Israel: "Ms. Magazine Should come Clean and Admit Mistake on Israel ad" and "Feminists Speak Out About Ms. Magazine Refusal to Run Israel ad." "Feminists Speak Out on Ms. Magazine 's Rejection of Ad About Israel." (Emphases added.) The media picked up on this slant, running headlines like, "Ms. Magazine Refuses Pro-Israel Ad."

That AJC was representing the country rather than the best interests of its women is revealed in this quote from Kurlander: "Our ad is about Israel and the way in which Israel empowers women." Of course advancement is possible for some women in the Jewish state, but it is disingenuous, if not deceptive, to claim Israel "empowers women" when the country's own statistics reveal that Itzik, Livni and Beinish are extreme exceptions to the norm.

A racial analogy drives home that point. Had Ebony been offered an ad picturing Colin Powell, Condi Rice and Clarence Thomas over the headline, "This is America," most of us would call it a cynical misrepresentation of African-American reality. Few would be surprised if Ebony turned down such an ad.

Israeli women registered their views on the ad once news of the controversy hit the Internet. "Cheap propaganda," wrote one. "False rosy picture," said another. "These are three very deserving women but This is Not Israel," declared a third.

"I do NOT care for them using ME, as an Israeli woman, for their own needs,"

"What about all the other women who are not THIS lucky?"

One email correspondent offered a graphic reality check: photos from that day's Ha'aretz newspaper and the suggestion that AJC publish them under the headline, "This is Israel." The pictures showed a woman burned to death by her jealous husband; a poverty-stricken 80-year-old woman and a baby girl who nearly froze to death for lack of heat; Orthodox women seated at the back of a public bus; and female teachers protesting their low salaries. "If the American Jewish Congress wants to be proud of Israel," this woman wrote, "let them help us fight against these gendered evils. Perpetuating the equality myth is harmful and damaging to us."

Israeli feminists resent it when Americans whitewash Israel's problems—like male supremacy, militarism, poverty, domestic violence and workplace sexism—rather than demand that the Israeli government solve them. Petitioning Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on behalf of women might be a more useful role for AJC than attacking feminism.

Finally, what gives the American Jewish Congress, with its own dismal record on women's advocacy, the authority to endorse Israel's treatment of women? Once known for its liberal progressive agenda, pro-peace politics and defense of civil rights, AJC has in recent years become a right wing force in the Jewish community, an uncritical defender of Israeli government policy and AWOL on women's issues.

Back in 1988, AJC's Commission on Women's Equality sponsored The First International Jewish Feminist Conference, which drew to Jerusalem nearly 200 Jewish women from 27 countries, including U.S. feminist pioneers Betty Friedan and Congresswoman Bella Abzug. The conference was a thrilling, galvanizing event that yielded an impressive plan of action. But, after the klieg lights dimmed, AJC lost interest and withdrew staff and financial support from the Commission.

Having lived through that profound disappointment and knowing what scant attention the AJC has lately paid to women here and in Israel, I can only conclude that Itzik, Beinish and Livni were pawns in a P.R. game—front women for pro-Israel hype dressed up as pro-woman hoopla.

In other words, Ms. was right to reject the ad not just because it was nationalistic but because it violated truth in advertising. The Jewish state has enough real enemies without someone inventing, on scant evidence, an anti-Israel conspiracy at a magazine that has reported fairly on Jewish and Israeli women. What was the point of alienating America's pre-eminent feminist publication, a periodical read in hundreds of women's studies courses nationwide? What purpose was served by maligning Ms. readers and forcing feminists to take sides?

Interviewing Harriet Kurlander a week or so after AJC's news conference, I asked, "What did you accomplish by dragging Ms. through the mud?"

The phone went silent for a long time. Finally, she said, "I can't answer that."

Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a founding editor of Ms., is the author of nine books, including Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America. She serves on the boards of the Brandeis University Women';s and Gender Studies Department and the Harvard University Divinity School Women's Studies Program.